Visiting a nice bike resort with no mobile map? Make one in Locus.

Michal, Locus team — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 13:23:31 +0000

Large bike resorts like those in Alps or in Whistler usually offer a decent dedicated map app of the area with trails, trailheads, emergency spots etc. With some you can navigate the trails or find out useful stats like length of trails or distance to the nearest pub.

Many bike parks, however, don't provide such digital luxury and bikers-mobile geeks must help themselves. Locus Map is the perfect solution, packed with all features you need:

map image calibration
route planner
navigation
track recording

Is there any map at all?

Even the smallest and start-up bikeparks usually have some map of their facility. In most cases, the map is drawn by hand or is styled in a playful way for bike families with kids, anyway, it can't be used for mobile navigation - it must be calibrated first. The map can be found on the bikepark's website or, at worst, on a board at its entrance. As an example we selected a small but well-maintained biking area near Jedovnice in the Czech rep. Here's their map:

Get the map in Locus

LoMap of the area the bike resort has stretched its trails around is quite detailed:

Nevertheless, having some more information in hand can be useful so we'll calibrate the original map so that it can be used with GPS. Calibration is a process of adjustment of the image by a real map. We'll use our LoMap as the muster. Exact procedure is described in detail in Locus manual >>. And here it is:

The map image is overlaid above LoMap in 50% opacity so that we can see details of both maps at once.

Trails are essential

Okay, we've got the map - we know where the trails are. But if we want to be navigated along them, we have to re-create them in Locus Route Planner. We can draw the line in manual mode but that would be meaningless. As we could see on the LoMap, the area is quite well mapped so we can try some of the automatic modes drawn with help of a routing service. It goes pretty quick then:

We can add important points and color the trails:

And now finally, the trails show their length, distance to the end and other useful info:

Let's go for a ride!

Now we're ready - we have the bikepark map, we have trails with stats. Just mount your phone on hadlebars, tap trail of your choice and start navigation:

Have fun!